Privacy advocates gained access to a powerful tool bought by U.S. law enforcement agencies that can track smartphone locations around the world. Abortion clinics, places of worship, and individual people can all be monitored without a warrant.

Privacy advocates got access to Locate X, a phone tracking tool which multiple U.S. agencies have bought access to, and showed me and other journalists exactly what it was capable of. Tracking a phone from one state to another to an abortion clinic. Multiple places of worship. A school. Following a likely juror to a residence. And all of this tracking is possible without a warrant, and instead just a few clicks of a mouse.

    • saltesc@lemmy.worldEnglish
      171·
      17 days ago

      I’d be surprised if it lasted longer than any other socially progressive trend. A few weeks, tops, with largest proportions falling off in the first week.

      This is the reality of social momentum these days. Resistance is no threat because it has extremely brief lifespan before moving onto the next thing to be a part of.

      • YarHarSuperstar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        16 days ago

        I agree but not because it’s “trends” but because this system forces us to have short attention spans by presenting us with a massive deluge of information about horrible things happening everywhere (many of which are caused either directly or indirectly by that very system) so we have basically no choice but to keep shifting our focus and updating our threat assessments or risk becoming totally overwhelmed and falling behind or burning out.

        • Szyler@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          15 days ago

          I instinctively closed your comment after reading “short attention span” because I knew what you were going to say. Had to go back to comment because I realise the irony.

    • suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.mlEnglish
      71·
      17 days ago

      It also won’t work since the service has enough precision to know whether you go in, and for how long. The real issue is that mobile phones are continuously broadcasting their location to any device that wants to listen, even if you turn wifi and bluetooth off.